OPENGELA

The Project OPENGELA will develop and implement an innovative integrated home renovation service (IHRS) for private residential buildings in two districts in the Basque Country (Spain) and subsequently replicated within the region. The project develops an economically viable business model that brings together active citizen engagement and an innovative financial instrument, making the service suitable for vulnerable populations. The local one-stop-shop pilots will be managed and coordinated by the Basque Government.

Objectives

• Foster energy efficiency building upgrades, on vulnerable districts.
• Minimize logistical, financial, administrative and legal burdens caused by a complex and multi-stakeholder home renovation process.
• Ensure that building retrofits consider the social dimension by incorporating security, comfort, and improved accessibility for Basque citizens to further improve the quality of life of the vulnerable population.
• Design a scalable operating model for the district offices, and ensure the replicability of the one-stop-shop service, at both the Basque Country and the EU-level.
• Create strong and reliable public-private partnerships for the provision of the service.
• Identify and overcome regional-local collaboration barriers inherent to home renovation services.
• Increase homeowner and regional partner awareness of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency, including health, wellbeing, comfort, job creation and energy poverty alleviation.

OPENGELA model will address the main challenges faced by energy efficiency programmes, namely the economic viability and the replicability by having a model built upon a public‐private partnership between the Basque Government and private actors providing financing and technical support and where district offices are funded with small fees paid by homeowners and validated providers. The project will rely on a proven financing tool –on‐tax financing– currently being promoted globally.

The project will implement energy efficiency as well as renewable energy solutions to ensure that the maximum CO2 mitigation impact is achieved. Additionally, integration with district heating and cooling systems will be taken into consideration to bring about a large scale impact. Thus, for the same comfort conditions, a reduction of 30 percent in C02 emissions is expected with the energy-efficient and low carbon solutions to be fostered. This quantity comes from the improvement reached when jumping from the “E” to “B” energy certification category.